


Unison

by Laylah



Category: Naruto
Genre: Clone Snuff, Community: bloodyvalentine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-01
Updated: 2011-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-25 14:46:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kakashi knows damn well that it isn't a healthy coping mechanism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unison

**Author's Note:**

> For the "Bloody Halloween" round at BV, prompt: Any Character: Snuff/narcissism/suicide idealization; Feeling, watching, or making their clones die arouses them.
> 
> Also please note, I am totally messing with the clone mechanics here for kink purposes. They just don't stand up to enough damage in canon. :x

Kakashi knows damn well that it isn't a healthy coping mechanism. He also knows damn well that he's not the only shinobi in Konoha ever to try this. Probably he's not even the only one to try it more than once.

The training fields are empty this late, but he goes further, moving outside the typical patrolling range around the village. Unleashing killer intent where it would get somebody's attention would ruin this.

There's a clearing in the woods that he's used a few times: remote, private, enough room to move without needing to do much damage to the environment first. He lands lightly on the dirt there—no grass to speak of; it gets torn up too often—and stands still for a moment, breathing evenly, feeling the movement of the forest around him and the welcome solitude. The full moon gives him plenty of light.

The seals for the shadow clone jutsu are quick and simple, chakra spent in a single sharp exhale. Kakashi's clone stands on the other side of the clearing, watching him, masked and inscrutable. Kakashi pushes up his forehead protector. The clone does likewise.

They move in unison, sprinting toward each other. Kakashi dodges a thrown kunai, flinging a handful of shuriken that his clone also neatly evades. They reach each other with a dull thud of impact, trading flickering quick blows, strike-block-strike: only Obito's eye lets them keep up with each other at this pace. Blood throbs in Kakashi's forearms, in his bound shins; he's bruising under the force of the clone's attacks.

He thinks he's the first one to switch to ninjutsu, but only by a heartbeat. Lightning hisses and crackles; Kakashi dodges barely in time, his sleeve scorched away and the skin beneath singed red. His answering strike makes his clone stumble and hiss with pain, blood darkening the brace wrapped around one thigh.

The battle is already decided at that point. A Kakashi who is wounded will lose to one who is not.

Still, he keeps his guard up as he closes the distance again to finish it. He attacks the clone's wounded leg first, uses the attempt to protect the injury to let him break an arm. His clone stops fighting back so hard then: they both know where this is going to end up now.

It ends with the clone pinned, Kakashi's knee planted in the small of his back, his unbroken arm twisted up behind him. His breathing is quick and shallow. He holds still.

The throat would be quick, but Kakashi can't suppress the instinctive urge to fight that, even now that he's made this a habit. He flips a kunai into his hand, pointing down, and drives it straight downward.

Between his weight and the chakra he puts into the blow, the point rips through the clone's flak jacket and sinks into the flesh beneath. It grinds against bone as it passes between ribs, seeking the heart—

And then it's done, the clone's body dissolving in a puff of smoke. Kakashi drops to his hands and knees, gasping, as the clone's memories enter his mind in a rush: the searing burn of chidori, the nerves screaming when bone snaps, the moment of utter helplessness and then the bright horrible finality of the kunai pushed through skin and muscle and lung alike. It's the sharpest, most vivid thing he ever feels anymore, these moments of stolen time, these deaths that are and aren't his own. He curls in on himself, shuddering, waiting for the intensity of the sensations to fade.

He feels...better, he thinks, when he's done. Calmer. Scraped clean and hollow, settled enough to get up and go back to the village for his next mission.

And he barely thinks about what would have happened if he'd lost at all.


End file.
